Month: October 2018

UPDATED! Second Life Steals, Deals, and Freebies: Three Options for a Donald Trump Avatar, Including One for Less Than L$500!

“I’m the best with avatars, I have the best avatars, the news, they say I can’t do avatars, that’s wrong, they’re wrong, Fake news! I think, people, when they think about good avatars, I can make avatars, with any avatars, all the time, better than China, better than anyone…”

Every so often I get the itch to create a new avatar. I’ve been wanting to create a Donald Trump-lookalike avatar for quite some time, and today I finally did it! I was able to snag the perfect avatar name, and here is what he looks like:

Orange Cheeto 1 27 Oct 2018

Now, I wasn’t as happy with the head that came with the default body, so I removed that and replaced it with another one I liked much better from the SL Marketplace. It’s got a much more pompous expression:

Orange Cheeto 2 27 Oct 2018

This avatar is wearing:

Mesh Body: Man in a Suit Complete Mesh Avatar (L$199 on the SL Marketplace; I removed the head and replaced it with what I think is a better-looking one)

Mesh Head: Male Head 2 Mesh (L$299 on the SL Marketplace; this head is completely resizable and you will need to scale it down quite a bit, then attach it to the Neck position on the avatar; I deliberately left it a little on the large size to give him a cartoon look, but you can certainly make it smaller. You can even tint it slightly more orange if you wish!)

Body AO: Chubby Girl AO by [ImpEle] (free from the SL Marketplace). This is a nice, simple, calm, free AO with no crazy movements.

TOTAL COST FOR THIS AVATAR: L$498

If you wanted a fatter mesh body, you could pick up the Piggu Jonathan mesh avatar from the SL Marketplace for only L$700 and use that instead. I have checked and you are able to remove the default head and replace it with the Male Head 2 Mesh above. Of course, then you’ll have to find some suitable clothes for the Jonathan avatar, but there’s dozens of options available on the SL Marketplace.

If you decide to go with the Male Mesh Head 2 (L$299), the Jonathan mesh avatar (L$700), and a tuxedo made for the Jonathan avatar (L$100), you’ll spend L$1,099. Throw in a Fat Boy AO by Voir (designed for the Jonathan avatar) for another L$299 and it’ll come to L$1,398 for a fully-outfitted Donald Trump.

Now, if you really want to go all-out with your Donald Trump impersonation, Session Skins has released a Donald Trump skin applier for the Catwa Stanley Bento mesh head:

Session Skins Donald Trump 27 Oct 2018.png

You can pick this up for L$399 at the Session Skins store (here’s the SLURL).

This would definitely be the most expensive option, as in addition to the L$399 skin applier, you will need to buy the Catwa Stanley head (L$5,000), plus a suitable mesh body (Session Skins sells body skin appliers for both the Belleza Jake and Signature Gianni mesh bodies for L$299 each). The Belleza Jake body costs L$2,999 and the Signature Gianni body is L$3,500.

So you’ll be looking to spend between L$8,697 and L$9,198 for the base Donald Trump avatar, and then you will still have to go out and spend even more on suitable clothing.

However, one advantage of this most expensive option is that you can get this Donald to wear anyting (and I mean, anything) you want. I’m thinking maybe some assless chaps and nipple rings, a black leather Make American Great Again cap, and a chain collar and leash, being led around by a Vladimir Putin avatar…

Pay No Attention 16 July 2018

(Hint: Session Skins also sells a Catwa head skin applier for Vladimir Putin…)

Vlasimir Putin

UPDATE Oct. 29th: I would like to mention and thank the people on the official Second Life user forums (and the VirtualVerse user forums, formerly known as SLUniverse), for helpfully pointing out Donald Trump items on the SL Marketplace. I could not have written this blogpost without their assistance. Thank you!

UPDATED: Give Me Your Opinion: Should I Leave an Avatar to SaveMe Oh in My Will, Or Is That a Bad Idea?

SaveMe Oh.jpg
SaveMe Oh

Among the 15 or so people who have contacted me so far about the possibility of inheriting one of my Second Life avatars via my will, the most intriguing request came from the SL celebrity, performance artist, and perennial provocateur SaveMe Oh (blog, Twitter, Flickr, Vimeo), who writes:

I would be glad to take over an avatar as we have all our Second Life to celebrate virtual life. Your avatar will become part of the SaveMe Oh army of freedom fighters… If you like the idea that SaveMe Oh takes over a part of you, please send me your most outspoken avi. I wish you a full life as long you are on this world.

Which raises a couple of interesting questions:

  1. Who is SaveMe Oh, and why does she have such a reputation as a troublemaker, or “freedom fighter” as she puts it?
  2. And just who is my most outspoken avatar?

So, I went and did a little background research on SaveMe Oh. The first thing I found was this video called The Parade (warning: not really safe for work):

https://vimeo.com/267468810

The Linden Endowment for the Arts (LEA) issued the following statement after this video was published:

This notecard is to ensure that everyone is aware that the Committee has banned SaveMe Oh at the Estate level on all 29 LEA sims permanently and AIRs are not permitted to override this. This is effective January 1st, 2017 and onwards.

It would seem that SaveMe Oh has been banned from numerous sims for her activities. Furthermore, she documents her discussions with many of the people who have banned her from their sims on her blog. She’s a troublemaker, all right, but every society needs agitators to shake up the status quo.

As for my most outspoken avatar. well, that would probably be my drag queen/clown avatar, Velcro Zipper:

Velcro Zipper at Franks 3 APr 2018_001

Velcro Zipper 3 26 Sept 2018

Both clowns and drag queens tend to poke fun at society’s sacred cows, and they often get away with saying the most outrageous things. This might indeed be the perfect match up!

But, for this particular potential avatar-inheritor match up, I want you, my blog readers, to weigh in with your opinions. I need everybody to fill me in here and provide some historical context before I make this particular decision.

Why should I leave SaveM Oh my Velcro Zipper avatar in my will? Why not? Let’s hear your thoughts and opinions on the matter! I’m genuinely curious to hear what you think. Thanks in advance!

UPDATE 7:00 p.m.: Well, I certainly got a lot of feedback from various people, mostly negative. I had been willing to give SaveMe Oh the benefit of the doubt, but many of you consider her to be nothing more than a griefer, and they warn me to consider what I am doing more carefully. So I will.

One person even went so far as to criticize me for wanting to leave my SL avatars to other people in my will in the first place, accusing me of being “furiously in need for attention”. This made me angry, and I told her that I have already explained what I am doing and why I am doing it in my blog, and I don’t feel the need to explain myself further. Either you get it, or you don’t. If you don’t get it, and all you feel you can do is criticize, then so be it.

UPDATE Oct. 27th: SaveMe Oh has responded on her blog, saying:

Now I have a question for Ryan Schultz. Do you think this is the work of a griefer or an artist?

If it be your will from SaveMe Oh on Vimeo.

UPDATED! Infiniverse: A Brief Introduction to a Blockchain-Based Augmented Reality Platform

Infiniverse 25 Oct 2018

Infiniverse is a blockchain-based augmented reality platform:

Frankly, this is nothing more than a slickly-produced promotional video, a purely imaginary artistic concept of what Infiniverse is supposed to be. (It reminds me of that equally imaginary Decentraland promotional video I keep seeing people refer to.)

The reality is probably very different from what is portrayed here. Who knows what the actual technical state of the project is? According to this Medium article, Infiniverse is currently in development and scheduled for a public beta release in the fourth quarter of 2018. (I’ll believe that when I see it.)

According to their white paper:

Infiniverse is a decentralized augmented reality (AR) platform and persistent virtual world on top of the real world, powered by the EOS blockchain and InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). Users can bring digital content into the real world, allowing it to be seen and interacted with by any other nearby users. The platform also allows users to place persistent content in the world, which remains in the same physical location even after the user has left the area or quit the application. However, due to the scarcity of real world space, users must purchase or rent “land”, the digital layer of real world locations, in order to place persistent content there.

Infiniverse has its own economy and virtual currency: Infinicoin, an EOS token. Infinicoin is used to register land and make transactions on the marketplace. The marketplace allows users to sell their creations, trade unique items, and buy and rent land, all without percentage-based commissions. The blockchain gives users full control and security over their virtual currency, land ownership and assets, while content is duplicated and distributed across the IPFS network.

Initially, the platform runs on iOS and Android devices that support AR frameworks with positional tracking, such as ARKit and ARCore. In the future, support will be extended to smart glasses when these devices are more mature and widespread, appropriate for outdoor use, and include GNSS chips for geographic location tracking.

The goal is to create a rich parallel universe that users can seamlessly switch into, allowing them to experience diverse AR content and applications, all co-existing and interacting, and a thriving virtual economy that allows content creators to create real economic value, while keeping all of the proceeds.

If you’re interested in Infiniverse, you can follow them on Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn, and Medium. Or you can just visit their website.

Infiniverse 2 25 Oct 2018

Since it’s not yet clear how social this platform will be, I am not adding this product to my List of Social VR/Virtual Worlds. But it is interesting, nonetheless. I wish them luck!

UPDATE Oct. 26th: Someone from the Infiniverse team named Neb reached out to me via Telegram with the following video, in response to my question about the current technical state of the Infiniverse project.  This three-minute video shows how Infiniverse would look using a smartphone:

The Killer App for Virtual Reality is the Metaverse

10166365646_0ac230d9b9_o.jpg
Anna Bashmakova and Oculus Rift (photo by Sergey Galyonkin on Flickr; CC BY-SA 2.0)

Loup Ventures is a research-driven venture capital firm based in Minneapolis and New York investing in frontier technology. They just wrote an article on Medium titled Is VR Dead or Just Getting Started?

Here’s a quote:

VR’s Killer App, the Metaverse

Everyone is searching for the killer app for VR, the application or experience that will be a system seller like Wii Sports for the Wii or VisiCalc for the Apple II. VR’s killer app, we believe, is already in development and should be ready for mainstream adoption in the next five years.

The Metaverse, a term coined in the 1992 sci-fi classic, Snow Crash, is a virtual universe similar in many ways to reality. Players can be anyone, do anything, or go anywhere, regardless of their real life circumstances. The Metaverse will be a place where all of what VR has to offer branches off from. A place where you can socialize, do business, shop, go on outerworld adventures, watch esports tournaments, and more. The limits lie in the imagination of users and developers who will compete for prime real estate in the Metaverse. We will take an in-depth look into the potential of the Metaverse in a future note, but for now, just picture The Oasis from Ready Player One.

High Fidelity raised $35 million in June, with the goal of bringing VR to a billion people through their new VR world. Linden Labs, maker of the popular online role-playing game, Second Life, is also working on bringing a Metaverse to the mainstream with Project Sansar. It remains to be seen who will become the real-life Gregarious Games, but one thing is certain — the Metaverse will play a critical role in the future of VR.

And I do agree with this. VR’s “killer app” will be the metaverse. Sansar and High Fidelity are just two of dozens of platforms which are in various early stages of development, and which could potentially transform the way we use computers and communicate with each other. It’s a major paradigm shift, similar to the one where we moved away from command-line MS-DOS and towards using a mouse with graphical user interfaces like Windows and the Mac.

One day (just not as quickly as the most enthusiastic forecasters predicted), we will all be in a form of virtual reality/augmented reality/mixed reality, both for work and personal use. It’s just going to take time, maybe another decade. In the meantime, enjoy the ride!